Communications is becoming increasingly important in today's society. In particular, video conferencing has become commonplace and an alternative to business travel. The proliferation of the internet has enhanced video conferencing capability, with IP video telephony becoming commonplace.
In one IP telephony example, two endpoints, such as IP video telephones, communicate with each other through the use of a gatekeeper. One example of a gatekeeper is a Cisco router running Cisco IOS software. In one example implementation, both endpoints register with the gatekeeper. Then, when at first one of the endpoints wishes to communicate with another endpoint, the first endpoint sends the phone number of the other endpoint to the gatekeeper. The gatekeeper returns the IP address of the other endpoint. Using the received IP address, the endpoints can communicate with each other directly. Gatekeepers can also be used in communication contexts outside the IP video telephony environment, including transmitting data utilizing only audio media.
Although the use of gatekeepers to process calls is satisfactory for some purposes it is not entirely satisfactory in all respects.